


Same, Same?

by TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blood and Gore, Chinese Takeout Restaurants, Curse Breaking, Horror Comedy, M/M, Supernatural Elements, Urban Fantasy, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:47:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26741599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard/pseuds/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard
Summary: Jisung winds up with more than his usual takeout order.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Han Jisung | Han
Comments: 17
Kudos: 147





	Same, Same?

**Author's Note:**

> It's only a birthday fic if you say it's a birthday fic. Happy bday, Chan. Hopefully you never read this.

_ Something’s not right _ , Jisung thought as the fog rolled in. He couldn’t exactly put his finger on whatever it was that was going wrong out here but he instinctively knew something was off. Not quite as obvious as a neon sign telling him to turn back, not quite a ghoulish figure in the distance howling ‘return the slab,’ but it was definitely something cautionary. Primal. The sensation settled in his body and sent sparks of warning off his nerve endings.

Still, he kept walking forward through the thickening fog. He had to. He was almost there. It would be safer to keep moving forward than to turn back.

A sudden chill went up his spine.

He got that tingly feeling up and down both arms like he’d walked through a spiderweb. 

_ Someone just walked over your grave _ , Hyunjin would have said if he were here.

Jisung spun around to look behind him but there was no one else on the sidewalk. Under any other circumstances, that would have been a relief but, at that moment, the empty path was even more worrying. There had been a crowd of loud, noisy teenagers behind him mere moments ago.

Now there wasn’t a soul. There wasn’t a sound.

Slowly, Jisung turned back around to face forward. Confusion made him slow his steps. Made him pay just a tad more attention to his surroundings. “Where’d this fog come from,” he questioned.

The night had been dark and cloudy up until now but the weather was still dry enough that there couldn’t be this kind of fog, sweeping over the parking lot like it was coming just for him. Even as he walked beneath the breezeway, he watched the fog thicken and thicken, whiting out the majority of his vision, blurring the buildings around him into silhouettes. 

He checked his watch. The digital face lit up bluish-green. It was 8:45pm. Still early enough in the night that it was extremely weird that every shop he passed was closed up tight. The florist. The vape store. The shoe shop. The pizza place. The comic book shop. The taekwondo dojo. Every door was locked up tight. Every sign was kind of dull and murky like they were memories as opposed to something physical. 

Jisung paused near each door and wondered why every shop was dark and strangely empty through the windows.

“What’s going on here,” he mumbled. His voice, although low and soft, sounded loud in the dimly-lit, unnatural silence. He hadn’t heard about this shopping center closing down. Besides, he’d been out here just the other day and everything seemed fine. 

So why did it now look like this place had been abandoned for years?

Jisung squinted out into the parking lot, but all of the cars that had been parked out there just moments ago were now gone. No. Not simply hidden by the strange weather but  _ gone _ . He could see that all of the parking spaces were empty when he hadn’t heard or seen a single car crank up and drive off. The fog was even swallowing up the street lamps and Jisung watched, one by one, as the bluish lights winked out of sight like stars at dawn.

“Some kind of power outage,” he guessed. But that explanation felt wrong. 

Everything about this felt wrong.

Jisung wasn’t where he was supposed to be.

This should be a familiar part of the neighborhood--he’d lived here long enough now--but everything felt off-kilter. Not by much. But by enough to keep Jisung thinking he’d made a wrong turn somewhere. That he’d walked too far or not far enough.

The fog felt strange on his skin. It was heavy and cold and was oddly solid when it swirled around his arms and ankles.

He picked up his pace. First, to a fast walk. Then to a half-jog. He passed by the dry cleaners. The cell phone repair shop. The bootleg perfume store. Faster and faster he went. He couldn’t explain it even if he wanted to, but he had a feeling deep down in his gut that he shouldn’t be outside in this fog. He shouldn’t be breathing it in. He shouldn’t  _ be here _ .

Was the strip mall always this long? Dammit, he should have been at the place by now. But the fog must have been screwing with his depth perception somehow, making him think he was moving farther and faster than he was.

But… 

“Finally,” Jisung choked out.

Like a beacon in the night, like a lighthouse warning ships away from rocks, the only light Jisung could see now was the bright yellow glow of the sign above the Chinese takeout restaurant’s door. The whitish lights of the interior spilled out across the sidewalk, inviting him in, almost. Jisung bent into a full-on sprint and closed the distance. Anything to get out of this cold, damp darkness.

Jisung tried the handle. He was relieved when he pulled and felt the door swing wide, heard the bell jangle above his head. He rushed in, pulled the door shut and stood there gasping as he caught his breath.

Fuck. 

Fuck!

The fog was so thick that he couldn’t see beyond the glass of the door at all. There was no sidewalk, no parking lot, no street lamps. It was just whiteness. Emptiness. A void. Jisung got the feeling that if he pushed open the door and stepped outside, he would fall off of the end of the world. He felt like he would be swallowed whole. Never seen again. He couldn’t even call Hyunjin. He’d left his phone at the apartment because picking up takeout usually only took ten minutes.

But now… 

Jisung turned away from the door, heart hammering in his chest. He tried to reason things away, tried to make himself believe it was just some freak cold front blowing in and carrying fog with it.

The sensation of something being wrong settled heavier in Jisung’s bones. 

He’d ordered takeout from this joint dozens of times over the months but he didn’t recognize this place at all.

It was larger than it should have been. With two rows of fold-out chairs set up by one of the walls for people to wait, the padding on most of them faded and worn.

The tile was a different color. Yellowish like wheat. Cheap and cracked. 

There were no gumball machines or press-on tattoo dispensers in the corner like there should be. Instead, there was a rather large fish tank filled to the brim with water but absolutely devoid of fish.

The paint on the walls was faded and peeling and it was some pine green color when he was used to the off-white wallpaper. 

The menu above the counter had seen better days, all of the images blurry and faded, the menu items missing crucial letters from the lines of red and green text.

But everything was clean, Jisung noticed. And well-maintained. Just old. Vintage. Separated from time, almost. There was no way this was some kind of renovation. He had walked into the wrong place entirely.

Somehow.

Even though he’d gone the same way he usually always went, he had wound up in the wrong place.

The smell of frying food was heavy and comforting in the air and it lured Jisung away from the front door and up to the marble counter. 

From his new spot, he could peer into the kitchen and watch the cooks work and bustle about. One of them flipped and turned a large black wok over a high fire, making rice and vegetables sizzle loudly as he stirred. A second cook coated chicken in flour to prep it for frying. Another cook chopped huge bricks of gooey, homemade tofu into smaller cubes. A fourth, way in the back, used a machine to stretch noodles.

None of them looked up from their tasks.

Jisung was a split-second away from shouting over all the banging and clatter to get some help when--

“What the fuck?”

Jisung startled at the sudden shout and turned around to face the voice. 

A man stood at the front door. He had so recently come through it that it was only now banging shut behind him, the bell jangling above his head. He wore a leather jacket to fight off the nighttime chill, had a motorcycle helmet in one hand and one of those metal delivery cases in the other, the restaurant’s logo slapped on every side.

Jisung squinted. Wasn’t the name wrong? Shouldn’t it be Golden something-something?

“How the hell did you get in here,” the delivery guy asked as he came farther into the restaurant.

“Are you guys closed,” Jisung asked. Maybe his watch was off and it was later at night than he realized. Maybe it took him longer to walk the block than he assumed.

The delivery guy kept his hardened gaze laser-focused on Jisung as he walked around behind the counter and set down the objects in his hand. “No,” he eventually offered. “We aren’t closed. It’s just… What the fuck are you doing? How the fuck did you...” Then the man shook his head as if finishing his question wouldn’t be worth the effort. He sucked in a breath and bellowed, “Chan!” 

A moment later, there was an answering shout. “Yeah, Chan?”

“Get out here. There’s a… There’s a thing.”

Jisung pointed to himself, a little offended. “Thing?” But he didn’t have time to get an explanation.

“Holy shit!” The second voice belonged to a man just stepping out of the dark, cavernous hallway on the other end of the lobby. “How the hell did you get in here?”

“That’s what I want to know,” said the delivery guy, but he sounded more impressed than pissed.

“Umm. I have an order,” Jisung said, hoping to wrangle some kind of normalcy out of the exchange. “I called it in half an hour ago. Should be under the name Han.”

Neither of the men moved. 

Well, the one by the hallway turned his head and shouted, “Chan!”

“What, Chan,” came the annoyed groan from deeper in the building.

“Get in here! There’s a thing.”

“I’m working.”

“Get. In. Here.”

And that made the delivery guy turn around and shout into the kitchen, “Chan!”

All four cooks shouted back in unison, “What, Chan?”

“Get your asses in here!” 

In fifteen seconds flat, Jisung went from being gawked at by two people to being gawked at by seven.

Apparently, all of them were named Chan.

“What’s going on here,” one of the Chans asked. He folded his arms over his tiny chest and stared down his long, slender nose at Jisung. “How did he get in?”

“I’m trying to figure that out myself,” stated the delivery Chan. 

“The door was unlocked,” Jisung defended himself.

One of the Chans from the kitchen snorted and mocked him, “the door was unlocked.”

It  _ was _ , though.

“He ‘has an order,’” stated the Chan from the hallway. He hooked his fingers like air quotes. “He ‘called it in.’”

“Should be under the name Han,” Jisung repeated, gulping. 

“Right,” one of the Chans snorted.

“Should we, like… check him for contraband or something?”

“Nah. He was clearly invited.”

It was probably too late for his fight or flight instinct to kick in but Jisung suddenly wanted to make a run for the door. He’d take his chances with the fog rather than continue to stand beneath the confused, condescending stares of these men. Unfortunately, when he took a step back, he ran up against a solid form and glanced over his shoulder to realize that an eighth Chan had come out of the hallway behind him.

The eighth Chan asked him, “Who did you talk to on the phone?”

Jisung stood there blankly, trying to recall the events. The man who answered hadn’t given him his name. He’d simply stated Jisung’s order would be ready in twenty and that he’d throw in extra fortune cookies. Now that Jisung thought about it, as often as he’d been coming here and he was positive he’d never seen any of these guys working here. But Jisung probably wasn’t in his usual place to start with.

He was beginning to understand that now.

“It was probably Chan who took the order,” said one of the Chans.

“No, it was more than likely Chan,” said another of the Chans.

“Pssh. Like Chan is brave enough to take phone orders. It was probably Chan,” said the delivery Chan.

“I wouldn’t!”

“No. It was Chan. I’m telling you.”

The same one from before shouted, “It wasn’t me. I swear to fucking god.”

“He said he’d give me extra fortune cookies,” Jisung spoke up to be heard over their discussion.

All eight of them gasped and chorused “oh” in unison.

“It was Chan, then,” said one of them, shrugging his shoulders up to his ears.

“That explains it,” mumbled the Chan standing directly behind Jisung.

“Are you all really named Chan,” Jisung had to know. He was going to lose his mind.

“Yes,” they all said. Once again in terrifying unison. 

Jisung balked.

They all had the same name, yes, but they were clearly different people. Like delivery Chan was tall and scrawny with bleached blonde hair. One of the Chans from the kitchen was shorter, slighter, with a headband around his forehead to keep his sweat out of his eyes. The first Chan to come down the hallway was even shorter than that and had a head of pastel pink hair. The Chan standing directly behind Jisung had a head of pitch-black, curly hair and a smile that seemed excessively friendly considering the situation.

“Well, where’s Chan,” said one of them. “He’s supposed to be at the register anyways.”

“He’s not in the bathroom. I just came from there.”

“He must have stepped out for a smoke break.”

“Chan never smoked. It’s Chan who smokes.”

“I quit like three months ago.”

“For real. Where’s Chan?”

“Yeah. Me and Chan and Chan and Chan need to get back to work.”

“Chan needs to get back in here. We have to get this guy out of here. What if he fucks shit up?”

“Would the shop have let him in if he’s not supposed to be inside?”

“I guess we’ll find out when he gets here.”

“Yeah. We can just, idk, ask him.”

“Did you just say eye-dee-kay outloud?”

Jisung was about to make a run for it when one of the Chans stepped forward and pointed out of the window. “Here he comes.”

Everyone turned their heads.

Jisung squinted. For a second, he didn’t see anything out the glass windows. The light from inside of the restaurant did not illuminate much. In fact, most of the light merely bounced back on the fog, making it impossible to see farther than an arm’s length out into the night. There seemed to be only stillness. Then Jisung became aware of the unnatural way the fog shifted and swirled as something large passed through it. Displaced it. Then, bit by bit, a towering silhouette became clearer. 

Jisung wasn’t sure of what he was looking at.

His brain scrambled to fit the shape he was seeing into a reasonable, definable category.

It failed.

The shadows coalesced into some kind of beastly shape. Large. Hulking. Wolvish… yet not quite. Jisung clearly saw the tall, swiveling animal ears, the long snout, the open maw and the lolling tongue, the clawed hands, and the nine, swaying tails.

His brain couldn’t process it. It provided him with the blanket term ‘monster’ and then shot a jolt of ice-cold fear straight to the base of his skull.

He sucked in a breath to scream.

But when the restaurant door swung open, the nine-tailed beast was gone, replaced by a man who didn’t look much older or much taller than he was.

“Chan!” One of the Chans shouted. “Do you see this? What the fuck is up with this?” They none-too-gently poked Jisung in the arm.

“Did Chan let him in? Or did Chan let him in?”

Another Chan nudged Jisung with an elbow. “Like, what the fuck is this doing here?”

Jisung got just a tad angry. He didn’t exactly like being talked about like he was little more than some rodent that slipped inside.

The Chan who had just come in through the door glanced up. In a lobby full of people, his yellowish eyes still went straight for Jisung and the sudden eye contact nearly made Jisung’s knees give out from underneath him. His complaints went silent on the tip of his tongue.

The other Chans kept on:

“Come on, kick him out.”

“He wasn’t invited.”

“But he  _ was _ invited. Otherwise, he’d have tools and he doesn’t have tools.”

“Did you actually check him for tools?”

“He’s not carrying any tools, goddammit!”

The Chan who had just walked in simply went “Shhh” and the lobby filled with quiet. There was a fierceness in this Chan’s eyes. Even as the yellow of his irises faded and faded, leaving only deep brown behind. There was a feral quality to him not all too different from the savage monster Jisung had clearly imagined had been just on the other side of the glass. This Chan’s hair was stylishly cut, dyed as red as a firetruck over the top but left black underneath. He had a small tattoo on his face, just beneath his eye. A symbol that Jisung felt like he’d be able to read if he was allowed to look at it long enough. Chan’s lips were plump and pink with a tiny little spot of red in one corner of them like he’d recently bit them bloody.

Underneath such a stare, Jisung honestly felt like he was about to be devoured. Not through sex but through sharp fangs, a twisting esophagous and bubbling stomach acid. Still, the only thing he could think of to say was, “I have an order.”

Like it was a running joke, the pink-haired Chan went, “he called it in,” throwing up air quotes again.

And, almost in a mocking tone, one of the other Chans added, “should be under the name Han.”

“I see.” The Chan who had just come through the door finally took his eyes off Jisung and continued through the lobby. “Coming right up,” he said. His voice was low. Not gravelly or savage but  _ smooth _ . Like a note played on a cello. 

He disappeared into the kitchen.

The lobby filled with noise.

“Where the hell did he go? Always leaving us.”

“It’s almost closing time, you know.”

“You were supposed to be on the register!”

“How did a human get in here?”

“Does he really have an order?”

“Tell them I stopped smoking ages ago!”

“We should make you wash dishes for putting us through all of this shit.”

The pink-haired Chan snapped, “Okay, everyone. Back to work.”

Slowly, the eight Chans dispersed. Four of them back to the kitchen. Four of them back down the hallway. They chatted casually, joking and laughing and complaining. As if none of them were upset about the intruder anymore.

Jisung was left to stand next to the counter, feeling unmoored. Like nothing in the past five minutes had been real. 

The ninth Chan came up to the counter from the other side and sat down a white plastic bag with the all too familiar repeating THANK YOU emblazoned on the sides. There was some kind of bucket just out of sight beneath the counter. Chan reached in, grabbed a handful of wrapped fortune cookies, dropped them into the bag. Reached, dropped in another handful. “Here you go.”

“Th-thanks,” Jisung stuttered out. He had a million questions to ask but his brain refused to churn through his stormy thoughts with any kind of speed. 

Chan slid the parcel across the marble countertop towards him.

The counter was high enough up that Jisung had to get up on his tiptoes to reach out for it.

“You already paid,” Chan told him. He seemed to go out of his way to make sure that their fingers brushed as the package exchanged hands.

“Huh?” Jisung asked. He hadn’t paid for anything. Not yet. “No, I haven’t.”

The ninth Chan simply repeated, “You already paid, Jisung.” He then brushed his fingers across the back of Jisung’s hand.

Jisung leaned forward and pulled the bag aside just to make sure the guy wasn’t trying to steal his watch from right off of his wrist, but--

“Thank you, come again,” came the girl’s peppy, upbeat voice. “I can help who's next!”

It wasn’t even like waking up from a dream. That would have been too easy. Too simple. There was no real shift in the atmosphere. No sensation of startling awake. No gut-twisting drop like he was on a rollercoaster. No real warning. Not even a blink-and-you-missed-it flash. Jisung only breathed out and then he was right smack dab in the noisy lobby of his usual favorite takeout place, hoisting a bag of his usual order off of the wooden counter while the usual register girl waved him away so she could deal with the last few customers before closing time. 

Jisung didn’t question it. Not really. Not in the way he should have.

He patted his back pocket to make sure his wallet was still there, then walked across the black-and-white checkered flooring and pushed open the glass door to go outside.

There was no fog.

🍜

Jisung didn’t really question it until he got back to the apartment and started unboxing all of their food. Egg rolls and fried rice and egg drop soup, sweet and sour chicken, mushrooms and tofu. 

Two handfuls of fortune cookies.

It was the only real sign that what had happened was real.

Hyunjin heard all of the ruckus Jisung was making in the kitchen and came out of his room. He was already in his pajamas, messy black hair shoved out of his face by a headband to allow room for the sheet mask to stick properly. He pointed at the back of Jisung’s hand and asked, “What’s that?”

And Jisung almost knew what it was before he twisted his arm up and looked.

Four long lines from his wrist to his knuckles. Bluish, smudgy streaks that were perfect replicas of the path Chan’s fingers took across his skin before they parted ways. Jisung hesitated, “I don’t know. A bruise?”

“That shit looks like it hurts.” Hyunjin poked the back of Jisung’s hand. “Does that hurt?”

“No,” Jisung answered truthfully. When Hyunjin attempted to poke him again, Jisung swatted his hand away. “Maybe it’s not a bruise. Maybe it’s blood or something.”

Hyunjin started opening boxes and putting his face into the billowing steam above the hot food. “Would blood be blue?”

“Maybe it’s paint.”

“Or magic,” Hyunjin responded in so serious a tone that Jisung didn’t feel compelled to argue. 

“Maybe it’s magic,” Jisung agreed. But then his stomach growled. Fiercely. Like he was a starved man who hadn’t eaten in days. “But let’s eat first.”

🍜

Jisung went back to the Chinese takeout place the next day. He hadn’t ordered anything. He just wanted to go. He just wanted to  _ see _ .

His curiosity had burned deep in his chest. Kept him from sleeping. Had turned into a physical thing that dragged him out the apartment and down the block even though he had chores to finish and work to do.

He just had to see!

At least the walk was pleasant. Dead leaves in oranges and reds and russets littered the cracked sidewalk and crunched noisily beneath his boots. The sky was cloudless and the sun was bright, but that didn’t fight off the autumn chill.

Jisung walked slowly, as if to give that weird fog more time to roll in. 

It never did.

When he reached the end of the block and crossed the street to get to the shopping center, he half-expected the world to fall out from beneath him. But the parking lot stayed full and busy. The shop doors swung open and shut as people moved about at the height of the lunch rush. Nothing looked abandoned.

He raised his arm, turned over his hand and stared at the four streaks on his skin. They were considerably faded but he could still spot the bluish outlines. He could still remember Chan’s featherlight touch and vulpine eyes. He lowered his hand and kept walking. Kept waiting. Kept hoping.

The takeout place was still on the far end of the strip mall. It was still called Golden something-something, the Chinese characters beyond his know-how, but they must have meant ‘dragon’ based on the illustration on the sign. 

When he pulled open the door and stepped inside, however, there weren’t nine men named Chan there to gesture wildly at him and scream over each other.

It was the same family who always ran the place. The same tall man at the stove. The same pretty-as-an-idol girl steaming the vegetables. The same bespectacled matriarch stepping through the hot kitchen, keeping herself cool by swinging a paper fan. And the same girl from last night behind the register, effortlessly typing in orders and swiping debit cards and greeting everyone with a smile despite the line being nearly to the door.

Honestly, he wanted to come here… but at the same time, he didn’t want to come  _ here _ .

No one had asked him so he didn’t have to explain away anything, but Jisung excused himself with a, “Sorry, I have the wrong place,” before he turned around and went back outdoors.

🍜

Jisung waited four whole days before calling in another meal.

A longer than usual gap.

Both he and Hyunjin were absolute shit in the kitchen--like actual fire hazards, literal dangers to their neighbors and themselves--so the two of them always alternated between picking up a cheap pep from the pizza place or splurging on lo mein at the Chinese spot. But, most of this week, they’d been ordering pizza and, for one of those nights, Jisung had walked two blocks farther for double-stacked burgers and deliciously greasy fries, but he couldn’t keep himself away from Golden something-something for long.

It was fear that kept him from dialing the takeout place any earlier than that. 

Not fear of seeing the Chans again but, rather, fear of  _ not _ seeing them.

Jisung definitely did not hide his disappointment when he heard someone other than Chan’s voice on the other end. And he definitely was not surprised when he asked to speak to Chan and was told that no one by that name worked there.

Still, he put in his usual dinner order and waited his usual fifteen or so minutes before he put on his jacket and beanie and left the apartment. It was dark out--had been for a while during this time of year--but Jisung kept to the glow of the street lights and made his way down the block.

When he came around the corner and saw the crowded parking lot, when he saw the familiar yellow glow of all of the shop lights, he felt something in his chest turn cold.

Had it been a dream? Had meeting all of those Chans been something he imagined?

It was true that he’d been in front of his computer screen more often the past two weeks, doing all of his edits and tirelessly waiting around for important emails and Zoom calls, but would some minor eye strain make him hallucinate like that? 

No. That couldn’t be. Every time he raised his hand, he could see the faded stripes of blue on his skin. The place the red-haired Chan had deliberately touched him. Marked him, almost. The color was almost entirely faded now, the edges so blurred that it was difficult to tell where his skin ended and the weakened magic began.

If it even  _ was _ magic.

Perhaps Hyunjin was only playing around.

Jisung sighed. Maybe it really was just a bruise. Maybe he’d actually slapped his hand over some wet paint.

He pulled open the door to the Chinese place and hadn’t even taken two full steps inside when he heard a loud, totally annoyed: “You again!?”

Startled, Jisung looked up.

He wasn’t in the takeout place. Well, he was. But he wasn’t.

“See, I told you he didn’t use tools.”

“Then how the hell is he getting inside?”

“How am I supposed to know? The fucker’s stubborn.”

Jisung turned around. 

Beyond the glass door, he saw only shadows and fog. No parking lot. No street lamps. No people. He had wanted to be here so badly just moments before. Now he’s scared all over again. Like this was his first time.

He swallowed down his apprehension and approached the counter despite how coldly the other two glared at him. He opened his mouth, but--

“Do you have an order,” asked one of the Chans standing behind the counter.

“Is it under the name Han,” asked the other. They snickered, hands over their mouths and shoulders bouncing up and down like school boys exchanging brand new dick jokes in middle school.

At least the ice in their stares had thawed. Maybe they were just fucking with him.

“Can I speak to Chan,” Jisung asked, full of hope.

The Chan on the left frowned. “I’m right here.”

Jisung tried again. “Can I speak to Chan?”

The Chan on the right turned around to yell into the kitchen: “Chan! The human wants to--”

“Wait,” Jisung cut him off. He was starting to get the hang of this now. They were all named Chan, yes, but the differences between pronouncing the names was about as obvious as the differences between their faces. It was all in the tone, in the inflection. Still, Jisung tried to be specific. “Can I talk to my Chan?”

“ _ Your _ Chan,” the Chan on the right repeated incredulously.

“I’m pretty sure he means Chan,” said the other Chan.

“No. I’m sure he means  _ Chan _ .”

The other Chan said, “Oh.”

The first Chan cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted “Chan!”

It only took a second or two for the correct Chan to come out of the depths of the hallway.

“You’re  _ his _ Chan,” said one of the Chans. He waved a hand in Jisung’s direction. “He claimed you, I hope you know.”

The red-haired Chan hooked his gaze in Jisung’s direction but his face stayed impassive and it was difficult to tell if he was pleased or not by such info.

“Well, he’s not  _ mine _ -mine,” Jisung muttered.

And although the earlier shout was probably intended to summon one specific Chan, six other Chans came wandering out of the kitchen or the hall.

“You  _ know _ I didn’t call you, Chan,” said Chan.

“I just wanted to see the human!”

“Chan, can you blame us?”

“Yeah, Chan. I can.”

Jisung knew the answer already but he asked again, “Are you really all named Chan?”

They all groaned, “Yes,” like it was something they got asked  _ all of the time _ .

They probably did.

“Well, technically, I’m Byungchan,” said one.

“And I’m Chanhee,” said another.

“And I’m Chanhyuk,” said the delivery guy.

A fourth raised their hand. “I’m Yuchan.” 

“I go by Haechan,” the fifth one introduced himself. “Not to be confused with--”

“Heechan,” a sixth spoke up.

“Well,” said the pink haired one who seemed to kinda-sorta be the boss of some sort. “My name is  _ actually _ Chan. Lee Chan.”

“Heo Chan,” said the one with black, curly hair and the overly-friendly smile.

That left the ninth one. The one Jisung actually wanted to know more about.

“I’m Bang Chan,” he stated. His gaze didn’t leave Jisung. His eyes seemed to cut  _ through _ Jisung. “And what the hell are you doing here?”

“I… I don’t know,” Jisung said. “I don’t know why I keep ending up here.”

“He’s not breaking in,” said the Chan with the headband. Yuchan. “He’s not using tools. He just comes in the front door. I stood here and watched.”

“Is the door broken?”

“No. I oiled it just last week.”

“Maybe we should wash the windows again. There’s  _ gotta _ be a smudge.”

“We should probably sweep the sidewalk. Make sure the welcome mat isn’t askew.”

“But look,” said one of the Chans. He had moved behind the counter while everyone was staring at the door and now held up a white plastic bag. He squinted at the receipt stapled to it and then said, “He really does have an order here.”

“For some strange reason.”

Jisung was confused. Was he not supposed to be able to order takeout from a takeout place?

Bang Chan stepped forward. “Did you eat all of those fortune cookies?”

It almost sounded like an accusation but Jisung nodded. “Yeah. All of them.”

“And read them?”

“Ye-Yeah. Always.”

Chan reached out, grabbed hold of Jisung’s hand, and then raised it to his face to peer at the fading marks on his skin. “It’s dim… but this should still keep you from walking over the gap.” He looked up at Jisung. “How do you keep ending up here?”

“Am I… Am I not supposed to be here,” Jisung asked. 

“Short answer: no.”

“Oh.” Jisung had wanted to see Chan again, he’d put up with nights of restless sleep dreaming of his face, imagining his hands, but now that Jisung was here and watching Chan’s disapproving scowl, he wondered if he had hoped and dreamed for no reason. If Chan didn’t see anything in him at all.

“Long answer,” Bang Chan continued, “we have tightly-knitted wards in place specifically to keep humans out. Perhaps you slipping through once could just be a freak occurrence. But you slipping through twice can only be the fault of the spellcaster.”

“Hey!” Byungchan fumed, propping his hands up on his hips. “I graduated top of my class.”

Lee Chan stepped forward. “Him hopping the gap is a problem, yes, but perhaps he can hop the gap because his orders show up here.”

“And didn’t you answer the phone call,” Heo Chan gently added. “Perhaps this is a little bigger than we’re thinking.”

“Ugh. I don’t need any  _ more _ problems,” one of the Chans half-yelled, pulling on their hair.

“Maybe I’m supposed to be here,” Jisung suggested. He grinned, not taking his eyes off of his Chan, hoping and hoping to be right about  _ something _ .

But Chan must not have felt the same way. “You don’t want to be in a place like this for long, human,” he stated. And it was like he let a little bit of himself go. His eyes got a little yellow, his face got a little misshapen as his beastly side clawed its way to the surface. His teeth got sharp. His fingernails--now claws--dug into the back of Jisung’s hand a little, just hard enough to draw blood. “Someone like you shouldn’t  _ want _ to be here with us.” Then, in a tiny voice, almost too soft for Jisung to catch, Chan added, “With me.” He let go of Jisung’s hand.

Jisung choked out, “But--”

“Here, take your food.” One of the Chans pressed the heavy plastic bag into Jisung’s hands. It happened so fast that Jisung barely managed to get his hands around the bulky package before it wound up on the floor.

“Try not to come again,” another Chan jovially waved him off.

“Really. How’d you get in here?”

The tall, scrawny delivery Chan put a hand on Jisung’s back, turned him around and steered him to the door. Towards the impossibly thick fog and the world that wasn’t quite the world Jisung knew. “Look,” Chan whispered in Jisung’s ear, as if he didn’t want any of the other eight Chans to hear him, “Chan’s a day or two away from breaking his curse and you might be his ticket. I mean… a human showing up here can only be to help him hop over the gap to personhood.”

Jisung tilted his head back. “Huh?”

“Just don’t let him eat you,” Chan said, swinging open the door, “or the past gazillion years will be a waste.”

Jisung repeated, “Huh?”

“Bye! Enjoy your dinner,” Chan shouted loudly. He shoved Jisung over the threshold of the door.

Jisung wasn’t ready to be done here. He spun around, raised a fist to bang it on the glass, but then he realized that he had already been nudged back into the world that he knew. The one where there wasn’t thick fog. The one where there was a parking lot full of cars. The one without a takeout restaurant full of Chans.

Jisung hissed as pain lit up his nerves. 

He looked down to see the four tiny crescents his Chan’s claws had left in his skin. Tiny little beads of blood pooled around the cuts, the damage so shallow that the blood was already beginning to darken and coagulate. 

With a weary sigh, Jisung made his way back home.

🍜

Hyunjin unpacked their meal while Jisung stood over the kitchen sink and washed the dried-up blood off of the back of his hand.

There wasn’t a mirror in the kitchen, but Jisung kept wondering how many of his dark thoughts he was wearing on his face. He wasn’t sure exactly what emotion it was that he was feeling, but he didn’t like it. It didn’t sit well with him. He hoped the feeling wouldn’t bruise his heart like Chan’s rejection bruised his skin.

Jisung shut off the water and was about to reach for the roll of paper towels to dry off his hands when, just like the other evening, Hyunjin pointed a long and narrow finger at him and asked, “What’s that?”

Jisung glanced down at his hand. At the four crescent moons Chan’s claws had dug into the meat of him. “A warning,” he mumbled. He grabbed a paper towel, wiped it over his hands and only hissed once at the pain. “A message to stay far away. To never come back.”

“Really?” Hyunjin grabbed a fried chicken leg and noisily bit into it. Mouth full, he asked, “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmmm.”

“What else can it be,” Jisung had to know. He nudged Hyunjin back a little so that he could scoop a heaping pile of stir-fried rice onto his plate.

“I don’t know,” Hyunjin began. He took another sloppy bite of his chicken leg and then pointed it at Jisung’s wounds. “That doesn’t look like someone forcing you away. It looks like someone desperately clinging on to you, if you ask me.” Then he looked up and met Jisung’s eye. “Is your boyfriend a nine-tailed fox or something?”

Boyfriend was a  _ strong _ word. Instead of correcting him, though, Jisung simply repeated what he’d been told. “He’s a day or two away from breaking his curse.” He hoped that meant something.

Hyunjin bit into his chicken leg again and then, rather belatedly, caught sight of the small tub of soy sauce sitting on top of the napkins. He made a grab for it. “If he wants to hold on to you that badly--” He gestured towards the cuts on Jisung’s hand. “--then I wouldn’t let him go.”

Jisung had only one thing to say to that: “I won’t.”

🍜

That night, he dreamed.

Or, rather, he would wake up and hope that he had only dreamed because what he saw… What he  _ would see _ would terrify him.

Jisung pushed open the door of the restaurant and knew that it was the one that he was looking for. That it was the one across the gap. That it was the one where all of the Chans worked. However, it was after hours. The lobby was pitch black, illuminated by a single dim lamp above the register. The kitchen was dark and empty and quiet, the floor still smelled like a strong, lemony cleaning solution. 

Jisung called out, “Chan!” He wanted his Chan but he would accept any Chan. 

There was no answer--not a verbal one--but he did hear a sound: a distant, muffled voice. 

Jisung slipped down the long and dark hallway, passing more rooms than a building this size should hold, then he passed through an archway and came out into a room where the tile floor was coated with fresh, sticky blood.

He knew what it was just by the smell. 

Jisung clamped a hand down over his nose and fought back his gag reflex.

The Chans were there. Eight of them. But none of them were the one he was looking for.

He took a step or two into the room only to stop short as he got a better look at them beneath the fluorescent lights.

Their faces were beastial. Wicked. Savage. Even when the men were half-transformed like this, Jisung could tell them apart. Their eyes were yellow and fox ears protruded from beneath their human hair. They had claws. Fangs. Tails. But none of them had as many tails as Jisung’s Chan.

They knelt on the bloody floor, wearing blood-stained clothes. Bright crimson was smeared across their faces as they ate. As they devoured. As they consumed.

They weren’t eating off of plates. They weren’t using utensils or napkins.

Their meal was whatever hulking mass that was laid out in a heap on the floor in the center of the circle. Their forks and knives were their clawed hands, ripping and tearing and peeling off skin.

“Doesn’t it taste best when the liver is fresh,” asked one Chan. One of the ones who rarely spoke. “When it’s still warm?”

“I like a little bit of refrigerated chill, personally,” said another Chan. “But I guess I’ll take it while it’s still dripping.”

“Liver is liver,” said another, “and if we don’t eat, we die.”

“If we don’t eat, we become human,” said the pink-haired Chan, chewing voraciously.

“If we become human, we die,” the same Chan reiterated. “If we become human, we lose our magic. We grow old. We rot.”

“And we can no longer hop the gap. What’s the fun in that?”

“Shhh,” said Heo Chan. “Don’t make fun of him. He’ll hear you.”

“He’s upstairs. You know he doesn’t like to watch us eat. The temptation is too great.”

“Come on, guys, let him turn human in peace.”

A few of them snickered.

One of them reached out a hand, dipped it into the abdominal cavity of the creature--of the dead person--like their torso was just a family size bag of Lay’s potato chips. He pulled out a handful of soggy red. He asked, “Did Chan really starve himself for a hundred years?” He shoved the wet mass in his mouth and chewed, his teeth crunching as he bit into bone.

“I forgot you’re a new hire.”

“Yeah. He did. He hasn’t eaten a scrap of human flesh in a century.”

“Such discipline.”

“It’s a sickness, I tell you.”

Another Chan slurped down a particularly large chunk of meat, then belched. “You really think Chan’s going to break his curse?” 

“I don’t like that word… Curse. It makes it sound like what we are are bad things.”

“We were born like this.”

“Cheers to that!” There was a smushy, moist sound as four of the Chans smushed together their handfuls of red meat like they were champagne glasses.

“Okay… so not a curse. Is Chan really that close to… being human? Is that real? Is it not a myth?”

“He’s gotta be close to the end. I stopped counting the days like seven years ago but he must really be in his last few hours. That human wouldn’t keep showing up in the lobby if Chan wasn’t so close.”

“His final test.”

“His last temptation,” Heo Chan giggled.

“Eat him and revert back to his true self. Or walk with him out the door and give everything up.”

“Give  _ us _ up.”

Lee Chan waved a bloody, gristle-covered hand. “We’ll be fine, you guys.”

“Of course you’re happy. You get to run the restaurant soon as he walks out.”

“You’ll probably take all of his sloughed-off tails and stitch them to your ass.”

“Hey,” Chan defended himself. “I’d share. What am I going to do with more than nine anyways?”

“Well then, who gets the other seven?”

“Do we go in age order or in order of who worked here first?”

“Gosh. Wait. Hold on. Hold on! This meat is so fresh. I swear it smells like the human is still alive.”

Another Chan sniffed the air.

A second followed suit.

One by one, pairs of gold eyes turned towards Jisung.

Three. Five. Six. Eight.

The joyous laughter in the room petered out, replaced by bone-chilling, tense silence.

It was an out-of-body experience.

As with most dreams, Jisung felt like he was outside of himself, peering in. He could see his saucer-wide eyes and sleep-mussed hair. He could see his wrinkled sleep clothes. He could see his hand clamped over his mouth and could count the divots in his skin, remnants of his Chan’s claws. He could see his bare toes just a smidgen away from the sticky red on the floor. 

He could also see that he was not running.

Why wasn’t he running? Why wasn’t he screaming? Why wasn’t his heart filling with terror?

“Hey, is that dessert?”

“It can be.”

One of the Chans closest to Jisung stood up.

_ Now _ Jisung’s body reacted properly. Now it obeyed him. 

He twisted around and took off towards the hallway but before he even got five steps, before he even passed through the archway on his way out, before he could let out a screech of horror, Chan stepped out of the darkness of the hallway.

Jisung came to a stop. His feet slid on the slippery floor. Chan’s hand on his elbow was the only thing that kept him from falling.

Jisung swallowed hard.

_ His _ Chan.

His Chan, with those fiercely glowing yellow eyes and that mouth full of sharp, jagged teeth.

Jisung could recognize him even then.

He lowered his hand from in front of his mouth. Slowly. Cautiously. “Chan?”

One of the Chans behind him went, “Yeah?”

There was a wet-sounding smack. “You son of a bitch, he’s talking to Chan!”

“Ohhhhh!”

“Jisung,” said Bang Chan. Despite how monstrous his face looked, he still spoke calmly, softly, quietly. “This is who I am.” He pressed a clawed hand to his chest. “Can’t you see me?” The last syllable of that sentence made him stretch his lips away from his sharp teeth. He twitched his fox ears forward. His nine tails unfurled from behind him, undulating in the air. There was an odd bass to his voice now. Something deep and primal and dark that hadn’t been there during any of their other meetings. “Monsters. This is what I am, Jisung. This is what we all are.” He looked right into Jisung’s eyes, his own practically glowing in the dark with otherworldly magic. “Are you going to run from that?”

And Jisung had most certainly been in the process of hightailing it out of there, screaming his head off. And he still  _ could _ run, he hoped. One glance over Chan’s shoulder and he caught sight of the yellowish light at the end of the hall. The lobby. His way out of this. His escape route. But then Jisung took one look at Chan’s face, took one long dip into the pit of those beseeching eyes, and all of that changed. “I’m not going to run.” Because he had wanted this, he reminded himself. He had dreamed of being back here, in this place.

He was dreaming now.

He was dreaming.

So Jisung said, “I want you, Chan.”

It must not have been the answer Chan expected because his whole body went rigid. His face stiffened. He pursed his lips. And then… he softened. Everything about him slumped forward in relief. His voice got slightly strained when he asked, “You aren’t going to run from me? When I-- You aren’t going to run when I look like this?”

And Jisung had never meant anything more than when he said, “No, Chan.” He remembered Chan’s claws in his skin, holding on. “I’ll stay.” 

Chan took one big step towards him, putting them chest to chest and nearly nose to nose. He let out a noise low in his throat, almost a growl. “Even now?”

“Even now,” came an echo from behind them.

Jisung startled and whirled around only to come face to face with one of the other Chans.

No. They were  _ all _ there, all eight of them, crowding around him. Leaning in close. Sniffing him. Their eyes yellow and feral, their clawed hands were tight on Jisung’s arm, their mouths stained red from what they’d been eating, their breaths foul from their meal.

Perhaps they were trying to scare him.

“You won’t run? Even now,” another Chan asked and revealed both rows of his sharp teeth in what absolutely had to be an attempt at a smile.

Jisung gulped. He turned back to look at his Chan. “I won’t run,” he said, determined.

Chan’s face had changed when Jisung hadn’t been looking. Gone were his monstrous features, replaced by the handsome human face beneath. The yellow had bleed from his eyes. His teeth were no longer razor-edged. Fox ears no longer protruded from his modern haircut. Chan raised a hand and gently cupped Jisung’s cheek. His thumb circled a gentle pattern dangerously close to the corner of Jisung’s mouth. Chan leaned in, close enough for his breath to spill out across Jisung’s face. “Even now,” he asked. It was almost a plea. “You aren’t afraid?”

Jisung shook his head. “I won’t run. Even now,” he said, and it wasn’t until then that he realized that he wasn’t sweating with nerves. That his heart wasn’t even pounding in his chest. 

He was telling the fearless truth.

And perhaps Chan sensed that because, after only a brief second of hesitation, he pressed his warm, soft lips to Jisung’s own and kissed the breath out of him.

🍜

Jisung snapped awake with the memory of Chan’s mouth burning across his lips. With the phantom of Chan’s hands warming the skin above his hip bones.

Wow. What a dream! It had been frightening, erotic, romantic and lonesome all at once. A swirling combination of colors that Jisung had to take several seconds to blink away.

Moments later, he realized that he was staring at the popcorn ceiling of his own bedroom.

He turned his head to the right and saw his nightstand, his lamp, the stack of magazines he always started flipping through but never finished before next month’s subscription came in the mail. He turned his head to the left and saw the wind slip through the open window and take his sheer curtains for a waltz. Beyond the swaying linens, he saw the reflection of moonlight in his floor-length mirror and, beyond that, his closet door.

It confused him a little. He could smell Chan so strongly, as if the man’s scent clung to his skin, to the air in his room. 

Shit. He was still ten feet deep in his dreams. He shook the remnants of it away and sat up. He fought and wrestled with his flannel sheets and chunky comforter until he could crawl to the edge of his bed and stand up. 

His room was dark. It was nighttime, still. But the sky outside of his open window was lightening up with dawn.

It had been quite some time since he’d slept through a whole night without waking up every other hour, without constantly tossing and turning, without having to pop another melatonin pill that usually never fucking worked. He no longer felt restless.

As a matter of fact, he felt content. Like he’d done something great. 

Jisung pushed his dark hair out of his face and crossed his hardwood floors on bare feet. Shit. He could probably stand to clean his room up a little bit. The dirty clothes were piling up. The trash was overflowing. It was just really easy for the days to slip by, for the garbage to stack up. It was a cruel yet inevitable side effect of working from home, of not having to get out of bed to do his work. And hadn’t he read somewhere online that even the act of cleaning up your room could at least put some anxious thoughts to rest? Ehh. He’d look into it later. Jisung swung open his door and stepped out into the mildly warm hallway. He wiped at his eyes, smacked his lips and gave his eyes time to adjust to the brightness of the light pouring in from the end of the hall. He was thirsty. Hungry. He hoped he could heat up some leftovers. He hoped there were still leftovers to heat up with a roommate as gluttonous as Hyunjin. 

As if sensing he’d been thought about, Hyunjin came around the corner into the hall, cast into silhouette by the hall light, coming from the direction of the kitchen. He carried a plate of freshly-microwaved Chinese food and didn’t seem surprised at all when he looked up to see Jisung standing in the middle of the hall. He smiled as he passed by. “Welcome back,” he said, and then kept walking.

“Good morning,” Jisung replied, his voice a frog’s croak from disuse. He stepped up the hallway, still trying to shake loose the stiffness and grogginess of sleep. Still trying to recall any part of his dream except Chan’s mouth on his and the suspicious stickiness of the red tile floor. 

Jisung didn’t think about it again until he had swung open the refrigerator door and shoved his head inside the cool air. The thought made him stand up straight and tilt his head.

Wasn’t ‘welcome back’ the oddest thing to say to someone who’d been asleep in bed all night?

🍜

Jisung didn’t know how he knew but he woke up Saturday and knew that it was  _ the day _ .

The day his Chan turned human.

No specific date had ever been mentioned to him. No exact number of days remaining had ever been told to him. But something inside of him told him that today was the day. Perhaps it was the phantom ache on the back of his hand where Chan’s claws had dug into him earlier in the week. Perhaps it was something else.

Regardless, at around two in the afternoon or so, he took a long shower, got dressed in his trendiest coat, wrapped his neck up in his favorite knit scarf and then proceeded to leave the apartment.

“Hey, Jisung,” Hyunjin called out to him from his spot on the couch, a steaming mug of pumpkin spice tea near his mouth.

“Yeah,” Jisung called back, halfway out the door and shivering in the chill wind.

“I want to see him,” said Hyunjin before taking a sip. 

And Jisung wasn’t sure he’d ever mentioned anything about where he was going today but Hyunjin always seemed to know what was going on with him. Jisung merely nodded and said, “I’ll bring him by,” before stepping out into the October air and shutting the door behind him.

🍜

Jisung almost thought that the fog wouldn’t come.

He almost thought that he… What had the Chans called it? He almost thought that he wouldn’t be able to hop the gap.

He almost thought he’d wind up in the wrong restaurant again but then, right as he was about to walk up to Golden something-something, right as he was about to resign himself to another awkward moment, the world around him shifted and darkened and he knew he was in the right place.

He pulled open the door and stepped inside.

The kitchen was a cacophony of noise, banging pots and sizzling food, a TV on too loud, one of the Chans shouting. 

Jisung walked up to the counter. He knew the Chan standing there by the register. Knew it was Heo Chan. Jisung wondered if he’d ever get to come back here once he took his Chan back with him.

Heo Chan looked up at him and his face broke out into that friendly, megawatt smile of his. The one that took up his whole face. The one that was in such sharp contrast with the bloody visage Jisung remembered from his dream the other night. “Here to take your Chan,” Chan said.

Jisung nodded. Chan wasn’t  _ his _ Chan. Just the Chan he wanted to see most.

Heo Chan tilted his head back and screamed, “Chan!”

“Yeah,” came the shout from the kitchen.

“Not you, Chan. I’m calling Chan!”

A voice from down the hallway called out, “Yeah?”

Heo Chan rolled his eyes. “Stop fucking with me, Chan. You  _ know _ I’m calling Chan.” And he was about to scream at the top of his lungs again but then said, “Oh.”

He didn’t even have to point. Jisung spun around. His Chan stood there, right at the end of the hall. Brilliant and beautiful.

The Chan at the register said, “He didn’t eat you so now he’s like you. Can’t you tell?”

And Jisung could tell. He could look at Chan and know that his eyes wouldn’t flash yellow again. That his fingernails would never curve into claws again. That he didn’t have any of his nine tails.

Heo Chan continued, “If you take him out that door, neither of you will be able to hop back over.”

Jisung kind of had a feeling about that. Just when he was getting used to seeing them all. Just when he was getting used to being in a place like this.

But not being able to come back… that’s what Chan wanted. He said, “I’ve waited a hundred years to be able to leave.”

And maybe Jisung had been waiting to take him. Maybe that’s why he had always been so restless. Maybe that’s why he could never sleep these last few weeks. “Come on,” Jisung said. He held out his hand. His left one. The one that only just that morning healed away the four crescent marks Chan’s claws had left. “I’ve got a friend who’d love to meet you.”

Chan stepped forward and took his hand. He squeezed hard as if he couldn’t let go. As if he did not want to lose this chance.

Jisung squeezed back reassuringly and then started towards the door.

Chan stopped him. Pulled him back. Swept him up into a brief flash of a kiss. 

Jisung’s eyes fluttered shut. He threw his head back. He felt his legs turn to jelly. But Chan was strong and solid and he wrapped an arm around Jisung’s narrow waist to hold him steady. To hold him close.

Their lips parted and they stared at each other for several moments before Chan gave him a subtle but determined nod.  _ I’m ready. _

Jisung pulled him towards the door. He was both fearful and excited. Overwhelmed yet prepared. On the verge of uncontrollable laughter yet, somehow, on the verge of uncontrollable tears. That’s usually how the moments before brand new chapters started went, though. Jisung glanced over his shoulder and met Chan’s eye, saw his big, hopeful, ecstatic smile.

God. He was so beautiful.

This was it. This was the moment. Everything changed after this.

Jisung turned back around to face forward, put his hand on the door handle and pushed. It didn’t budge, at first. The glass door felt heavier than usual today, almost as if it wanted to remain shut. But then Chan put his own hand on the handle, added his own strength to Jisung’s and, together, the two of them pushed the door open and stepped outside.

There was no fog.

**Author's Note:**

> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/TheSwingbyJHF)


End file.
